Adjusting To Being Unemployed

I have to admit that it was a huge shock when I found out that I had lost my job in mid February, not only because I needed to be employed to ensure I had enough money to cover my living expenses, but because this was without a doubt the worst time in my working career to be looking for a job. The recession in the USA was starting to hit hard, few companies were (and still are) hiring new people in the IT field, and so for the first week or so I was pretty much in panic mode.

For those of you who are new to my blog, I hope that you enjoy the articles that Debbie and I write and will subscribe to them, either via RSS feed or email. We are also both on Twitter (Tony / Debbie) and you can follow us there. Our lives are complicated, with me living in South Florida while Debbie lives in the South of England. I am divorced with 2 young girls who live 30 miles from me, and child support for them takes a good proportion of my income every month, so obviously losing my job came as a great shock.

For the first few weeks at least, despite my alarm having been turned off, I would still wake up at 6:30am automatically, which really frustrated me as I didn’t need to. I also wasn’t sleeping too well, waking frequently during the night, and with working to update web sites, my resume and to get my affairs in order until late every night, I was exhausted. Finally I managed to get into a better sleeping pattern as things settled down.

With the prospect of getting another job in the field that I work in (I am a Senior Analyst/Programmer specialising in JDE World Software – an integrated system now owned by Oracle that is used by larger corporations) being slim, I decided that one thing I ought to do while unemployed is to try and do my best to make a living online. I figured that if I can earn more money online than I have been doing, and ideally earn enough to make a living, then the future would look a lot brighter. IT used to be a great field to work in, but in the last 10-15 years the rate of pay has actually decreased, and most companies don’t offer good benefits and definitely no job security these days. Anything I can do, especially as I am getting older, to get out of this dying field, is a good thing.

Well after a few weeks I managed to sleep better, and right now I can guarantee to more or less wake up between 7:30am and 8am most days, sometimes even later. The problem now of course for me is how to be productive. I am unemployed right! So I have all day to do what I need to do. Well it’s really not as easy as it sounds. Let me give you a run down of a typical day for me…

7:30am-8am – Wake up.

8am – Check email, web stats, minor web updates, shower, breakfast.

9:30am – Get some work done.

11am – Debbie comes home from work (4pm in England). Chat on webcam for a while, work on web tasks together.

12:30pm – Feeling peckish, grab a bite to eat.

1:30pm – Take a sauna/steam and have a swim.

2:30pm – Chat with Debbie.

3pm – Get some work done.

5pm: Goodnight chat with Debbie (10pm in England).

6pm – Grab dinner.

6:30pm – Get some work done.

8pm – Take a walk.

9pm – Watch tv / get work done.

11pm – Off to bed.

As you can see, I get some work done, but in short bursts, and in reality I barely have more than an hour for each burst before I am distracted by something else, like the phone ringing, or new emails coming in. I am determined to try to get fit and lose weight, so my daily sauna/swim is very important to me, especially as I am living in a community in South Florida where we have a nice pool and sauna, plus the weather is on my side most of the time. So I don’t want to give that up. I also need to chat with Debbie, as it’s important to us both, and it’s really hard to be so far apart for months at a time.

The solution is to try and do something to reorganize my days so that I can make better use of them. I started today, not too successfully, but this is my new plan…

7am – Get up early, quick look at email etc.

7:30am – Take a walk. I live in a community built around a golf course with several lakes, and walking around the block is 2 1/4 miles. I also live on the 7th floor of a condo block, and walking down the stairs, around the lake, back up the stairs took 36 minutes this morning, one of my fastest times.

8:30am – Shower and breakfast. A nice cool shower to clean off, then a healthy breakfast, either something like Raisin Bran or Oatmeal with a Banana, and Orange or Grapefruit Juice.

9am – Get some work done.

12am – Chat with Debbie. Both of us waiting until 5pm over there in England to chat, so we both get more done.

1:30pm – Lunch, Sauna and Swim.

2:30pm – Back to work.

5pm – Goodnight chat with Debbie.

The evening I can’t do much about, since I want to take my evening walk, and I go with Tim, who I rent from. It’s a lot nicer walking with someone, and I time the walk to fit in with his schedule. Fortunately we now have the ability to record television shows automatically, which is wonderful as it allows me to still watch my favorite shows, but frees me from having to worry about when they are on.

The best thing about getting up early and taking a walk is that I feel really energised afterwards. Doing this early is best in Florida as it soon warms up down here, but it also means that I have worked out by 8:30am and an ready to go and get stuck into my tasks for the day, instead of feeling sluggish having just got up and not done anything.

As far as looking for a job, these days jobs in IT are mostly advertised on the internet, and so I have various searches activated on sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com which send me emails of any new jobs. Also having my resume active on these sites, the headhunters come to me when they have any openings, but inlike other times when I have been looking for work, this time there are precious few jobs going for people with my qualifications. In the last week I have found 3 jobs – one in Pennsylvania, one in Texas, and today one in Los Angeles, today’s being the only one that I would say I am well qualified for, and none in any location that I am happy to relocate to. I don’t see things improving any time soon.

My working day consists of writing articles on here, The Laughline and Squidoo, plus promoting the same on Tagfoot and Stumbleupon, as well as other sites. As well as posting links, I am actively researching for new ways to promote and cross link my sites, to improve traffic and also affiliate earnings. Some days it’s good, but the last week traffic has really slowed down unfortunately, and I don’t know why.

If you have any comments on how to better organise my time, or on how you organise your time I would be pleased to hear from you. Also if you have any suggestions for better marketing my blogs to get better traffic I would like to hear. I am always open to cross linking to other related sites, and there are many other blogs out there that I would be pleased to swap links with. Don’t forget that you can use the Share button at the end of this article to subscribe to our feed, and if you can Stumble, Digg or Twitter this I would be grateful.

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I have to admit that I allow my wife to control what we watch on television most of the time, since we enjoy mostly the same shows, but although she is technically savvy in many ways, there are a few ways in which we differ in our methods.

Yes it’s true. The more you write, the more you have to promote what you write. It’s not enough to go into any social site, bookmark a post, share it and disappear. You have to be an active member of that community to be successful. However there are only so many hours in the day to spend on each site.

My theory is that you need a partner who can do the promotions, while you write the articles. Or maybe better, a partner who writes articles on some themes and promotes your works, while you do the opposite. That way you can be a lot more productive.

Having lost my job 7 weeks ago, I can completely understand where you are coming from. I’m not in the US nor am I in IT, but the story is similar here in New Zealand.

I had a good shot at one job here but ended up first runner up for the position. (unfortunately unpaid). However, I have made a concious decision to stop looking for work, learn what I can about the necessities of life (what is really important), and see what opportunities come my way. I know this seems awfully pasive, but I have already been offered a job, which I am about to turn down. For me, this is a huge opportunity to change direction in life.

P.S. I would totally recommend “the four hour work week” by Tim Ferris. Apart from making you not to ever get another job, it is packed full of great ideas to become more effective and achieve more in less time. Good luck in the future

It is tough when you lose your job and there isn’t much hope for getting another one, at least not one that pays what you would like or need. However, if you have the desire to be independent, it does give you the incentive to go ahead and try to find opportunities that will help you to be your own boss.

I wish you success in finding something. At least with working for yourself, the hours that you put in are for your benefit, and with luck the work that you do is more of a hobby than work.

I will take a look at the book, thanks for the tip. It sounds like what I need, and I do need good ideas for being productive, and for turning that productivity into profit.

It’s been 20 years since I was in New Zealand. I spent 9 months in Auckland and loved it. You live in a very beautiful country.

I know exactly what you are feeling Tony. Even though I am a nurse and you would think I would never worry about working. I do. The recession has affected us all. I no longer have the luxury of having how ever many hours to work that I would like. Now I beg, borrow and steal to be able to pay the bills with no extras. It is really rough.

So as a result I am also really working hard to start earning money online. Although for the first time I have had some success. It is not nearly enough to take the pressure off. So I am constantly reevaluating what I am doing with my time. How can I be more productive.

One thing I have done is include my husband (who, although supportive, knows nothing about online anything) in my “work schedule” and then he helps me to not be distracted during those times.

The problem I have is once I become productive, I could literally work for hours and hours without stopping and there is no balance in that. So I like your idea of scheduling in your necessary distractions, for me it would include, animal chores, fixing a meal, laundry, etc. Not all on one day maybe, but that way it would be a little more organized.

I enjoyed your post and it has sparked some productive thinking on my part. Great read. I did give it social love.

Thanks for the lovely comment Susan, and also for the social love. I already saw a nice review on Stumbleupon. That is much appreciated. I think I am at a point where I am struggling to find new sites to market to, and also new people on those sites, another hurdle to overcome, and then the traffic should return again.

It’s good that your husband is “co-operating” with helping your schedule, since distractions at the wrong time can ruin your productivity for sure. Debbie and I are doing that quite a lot now, and not chatting all the time that we are both home (even 4,500 miles apart). She has her work to get done of course, and I need to get mine done too.

I definitely need to try and assign times for certain things, like responding to comments on Squidoo, updating lenses, checking messages on Stumbleupon, Tagfoot etc. If you do all of these piecemeal throughout the day multiple times, you still never catch up, and the important stuff doesn’t get done either. I maybe need to schedule certain things for a 1-2 hour session 2 or 3 times a week, not every day. It’s very important to write articles / create new lenses, since the more articles you have, the more material there is to generate interest, as well as backlinks. However you also do need to promote these, until you reach the point where your sites just take off on their own as you have a huge following doing that for you. That is a goal to aim at.

Same problem with time management for me too. I have been “working for myself” for over a year now and my productivity is much lower than when I had a “proper job” despite not having to do the 1.5 hours a day in the car (or over 3 hours a day when I was commuting to Southampton from London) I tried estimating the money per hour for each activity I did and that allowed me to filter out a few non-profitable tasks, but with promoting web-traffic it is almost impossible to calculate. I discovered some money-making web-sites were paying well below minimum-wage so once I’d reached payment threshold I stopped using them.

I understand completely about those thresholds. I spent many hours once on Gather.com, responding to messages, working towards a payout of $20, because having got most of the way, I didn’t want to lose my investment, but in the end it was a waste of a lot of time. I think it’s only worth spending time on sites where you can make a reasonable amount of money, but it also takes time to realise how much or how little you will make on a site.

No matter what you do, those backlinks from multiple sites are all important, as it affects your Google ranking and general exposure. I think sometimes it’s a matter of luck whether you get seen and pick up a good following or not. It depends on the contacts that you come across and how well traffic from them starts to build.

I don’t envy the daily commute to Southampton down the M3 and the M27, especially when the weather is bad. I am amazed the M3 is still mostly 2 lanes each way as well.

Update, Tuesday… Debbie was going to call me before she went out to work, but I already woke up before 7am. I have now chatted with her, answered all my comments on here, and am ready to set out on my morning walk. Raring to go, chomping at the bit, and hoping today is a productive and profitable one.

Time management is a tough one for most people, me too. I finally had to start setting a schedule for myself just as if I was working a regular 9 to 5. This also involved talking to my husband about my schedule 😉

I get up by 7:30 and work until 11:00. Then there’s lunch and a long walk with hubby. Then I work from 1:30 to 4:00 or 4:30 unless we have pre-planned something different.

I’ve also had to eliminate browsing the web, checking e-mail and such until evening. It was eating up all of my time!